Dominus
by Maribor
Summary: The Doctor finds help and solace from an unlikely source in an unlikely place. Final chapter in the series. Sequel to "De Profundis" and "Confutatis Maledictus"


** I think this is the last installment in this short series. If you haven't read "De Profundis" and "Confutatis Maledictus" you'll want to start there first. I thought about doing one with 11/River but decided against it. If I come back to it later I'll title it supplemental or something. I couldn't leave depressed Doctor so depressed and who better to heal him than the Master. The Doctor's and the Master's names, their true names are represented by "_". According to the Doctor Who Wiki Torvic is a kid who used to bully both the Doctor and Master in school. The Doctor killed him to save the Master's life. Please read and review. Oh, and the short quotes at the start of each story have been from "Caligula".**

**Dominus**

_"The man to choose the hour of his own death is the closest he will ever come to tricking fate."_

"Tempus Dominus." he hisses it in my ear and I know I am dreaming. "I hate it when you call me that." he continues before I've even said a word.

"I haven't said anything."

"You were going to call me Koschei. It's what you always call me when you're feeling sentimental."

"I assure you I'm far from feeling sentimental." I said slowly. I always spoke slower in my dreams. And then my brain committed a clever betrayal and we found ourselves laying in deep, thick red grass, fragrant and lush the way things always are in memory.

"Oh God." he sighed. "Really, _here_? You bring us here?"

Despite his annoyed protests he lay back in the grass with me, close to my side.

"Theta..." he sighed. "So you're dying then?"

"Thinking about it." I replied taking a handful of grass and letting the wind carry the blades away.

He burst into laughter then, uproarious laughter, the kind that so often got him in trouble at the Academy.

"And you came to me for help? What to aid you or talk you out of it?"

"Don't know really." I said meeting his eyes for the first time.

His smile faded away and he started to scowl at me.

"Don't be stupid." was all he said.

"Remember the hours we spent here. I always liked your father's estate better than my own. It was so much warmer and friendlier."

"You didn't have to live here, now did you?" he said uprooting a handful of grass himself.

"It always felt safe."

"That's because you were running." he said simply.

"We both were." I paused for a good long while. "I never felt guilty for killing Torvic." I confessed.

"Why should you? He brutalized us, he was lucky."

"I feel guilty for what it did to you."

"You stink of guilt, _."

I closed my eyes, pressing my lips together tightly.

"You used my name."

"It's your dream." he said with a shrug. "Why don't you ever remember anything...happy?"

The scenery changed again and now we found ourselves outside of the Academy, squeezed into that corner that became our corner. Hidden, slightly in the shadows, away frorm lessons and the excited voices of other boys we were safe. Like so many times before he had me pressed against the wall.

"Still won't let me take the lead, eh?" I asked.

"You were always too slow. I wanted it quick and dirty. Slow was for being at home, in bed after classes. Or renting a room in the Capitol. Quick and dirty doesn't get caught."

He kissed me then hard and lustily, his body pinning mine against the cold stone wall. I couldn't move and I didn't want to.

"It never occurred to you that I thought almost getting caught was half the fun?" I grinned at him and he looked back at me both surprised and pleased.

"Remember how you'd beg for it? Remember how _you_ named me Master?"

"I remember." I said. Even in the dream I felt our hearts quicken. My hand started to grab at his back, yanking him even closer to me. "And what if I want it now, Master?"

He pulled away from me studying my face, trying to find my angle, the secret trick I was playing on him. But there was none, so he found none.

Instead he sunk his teeth into my neck, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to draw blood.

I moaned low and guttural and it echoed off the high stone columns.

"Shhhh!" he said but he was laughing at the same time, softly against my ear. "They'll hear us."

"I don't care!" I responded nipping at his bottom lip and in response I felt him grind his pelvis against mine.

Suddenly the voice of a long forgotten Chancellor calling our names rang out across the grounds.

"_, _ you will cease this instant!"

"Now see what you've done?" he said looking at me gleefully.

"Run!" I said taking his hand and we sprinted across fields of distant memory, laughing like children and as everyone is wont to do in a dream we arrived at our destination not knowing how we'd gotten there.

"Are we in your bedroom?" he asked me glancing around. "I haven't been here in ages."

"It looks the same." I said. "But then it would wouldn't it?"

He closed his eyes and whether he was remembering or creating I couldn't tell.

"It's late in the evening. Everyone has gone to the city. We're expected but we stayed behind." he says after a moment.

He suddenly rushes at me and engages me in another kiss.

It was perfect, a perfect kiss, a kiss I'd been trying to recreate for eons.

"Were you my first love?" I asked him when I could finally take a breath.. "Had I really forgotten that?"

He looked down at me, yes down, we were suddenly in bed, our clothing gone. He was above me, his chest heaving, his brow furrowed as he observed me.

"Who else?" he replied easily but the answer seemed to disturb him.

"Was I yours?"

He closed his eyes for a second but didn't answer me. Instead he returned to my lips, kissing me passionately, desperately.

"This was before everything went wrong, with both of us." I murmured as his lips found my neck and then drifted down to my collar bone.

"Speak for yourself. I can still hear the drums."

"It's a dream, you shouldn't." I said upset at the notion. Placing my hands on either side of his skull I stilled him for a moment. The sound came through loud and clear and in a way I couldn't have managed in the real world I first slowed, then stopped them.

"There, all better?"

He was frozen above me, his mouth slightly open his eyes bloodshot, wide and sharp. Suddenly they began to fill with tears before quickly spilling over. He collapsed in a heap on my chest and sobbed in a way that made me think he might shatter.

"Koschei?" I asked tentatively running my hands through his ridiculous bleached hair.

He wouldn't answer me, instead I felt tears run across my stomach and down onto the mattress. I held him there like that, stroking his hair as he quieted.

When he resumed his path down my body there was a marked difference in his demeanor. He moved slower and sweeter. It started to make me grow uncomfortable.

"Koschei, would you do something for me?"

"Anything." he said softly. I was almost taken aback by his docility but figured at least my oldest friend would be willing to help me.

"Will you... hurt me?"

He stopped what he was doing, removing his lips from my body and pushing up to look at me.

"What?"

I swallowed expecting he of all people to understand.

"I've lost so many of them you see. I can't handle it anymore. It's all just too heavy. I can't enjoy myself, It hurts to enjoy myself. It hurts to live. The only peace I get is when someone finally treats me like I deserve to be treated. Please, will you hurt me?"

He was on me like a shot, pinning my down by the shoulders, nose to nose.

Koschei regarded me through slitted eyes, I saw his jaw working back and forth and he suddenly seemed of full of rage. Perhaps this would be exactly what I needed.

"No! I won't. Listen to me, _, you fool. People die, everyday. Every single day, that's what happens. And you can try to hold onto them, you can scratch and claw and tear at them and they will still slip from your grip. Either accidental or purposeful or old age, the grave will find them. It _stalks_ them, _especially_ humans. It stalks us all. You did everything you could, _everything_. I know that because you are the best of us. That's why you fled. That's why you survived. And that's why I spent a dozen lifetimes chasing you."

He practically spat the words in my face which is why the incongruity of his kiss took me off guard. His lips were soft and yielding. His hand caressing my face was the first touch that hadn't hurt in ages.

"I don't have to give you what you want to give you what you need." he said and I put my hand lightly to the back of his neck as we kissed. His tongue felt as familiar in my mouth as my own. How many mornings, afternoons, nights had we spent locked like this. No, not quite like this. Suddenly the old rivalry was gone, the jousting, the sparring, the jockeying for position, the hard panting breaths, the frantic orgasms followed by loving but guarded teasing and boasting. This was different, this was the man that had known my body in all it's incarnations, every hair, every fingerprint, every rib. It was like being found again and I realized no one had touched me quite like this for centuries.

He eased down my body and when he took me in his mouth I called his name, his real name, over and over and over again. He brought me just to the edge and then stopped, just as he used to.

He returned to my arms kissing me and in between kisses he watched me intently as he worked his erection against my own.

He entered me without preamble but it wasn't harsh and it didn't hurt.

"Master." I whispered.

"_." he corrected.

He started thrusting inside of me long, deep satisfying strokes and when I tried to close my eyes he demanded that I open them.

"Please, say my name." I begged.

He smiled at me, a smile so unusual on his face because it lacked any malice.

"_" he obliged.

"Again. Just say it and don't stop. Don't stop saying it."

"_. _. _."

I put a hand on his arse trying to drive him deeper inside of me and as he whispered my name in his ear, my real and proper name I felt that delicious heat start to grow and burn in my stomach.

He quickened his movements, still maintaining the most intense eye contact with me.

We came together, we always did, we knew each others bodies well enough to time it that way.

We shuddered together in one anothers arms, coasting those last remaining waves and crests to the shores of hazy bliss.

He took me in his arms and laying across his chest I recalled how long it had been since I heard the sweet tympany of two heartbeats in my ear.

It was enough, it was more than enough.

"I want to stay here." I said softly.

He chuckled.

"Isn't being stuck in your head part of your problem?"

I didn't say anything and held him tighter.

"You know I'm an echo." he asked after a moment. "Just a part of me you keep alive in your mind for reasons unknown."

"You're not. You may be echoing back, all the way from the Time Lock but you are not an echo."

He sighed, realizing I knew, he seemed to see no reason to continue the subterfuge.

"Fine, I'm real-ish, does that make you feel better?"

I paused before answering.

"Yes...-ish."

He laughed then and after a moment I joined him.

"Better now?" he asked.

"Maybe."

"Well, go on you goody-goody, haven't you got worlds and people to save." there was disgust in his voice but I didn't quite believe it anymore.

"How can I get back here? Should I need to, how can I find you."

He gazed down at me fondly and actually squeezed me in a makeshift hug for a moment.

"Oh, you know me, I'm always around." he said quirking a smile. "You have to go back now."

With that he leaned over me and suddenly in that logic that only dreams have I knew when he kissed me I'd awaken.

His body was over mine now, his lips hovering just a hairs breadth away from my own.

I willed myself not to cry and he smiled appreciating the effort.

"To answer your question, No, _, you weren't my first. You were my _only_."

And then we kissed.

I woke up to the familiar hum of the TARDIS. She was waiting for me, she had been waiting for weeks for me to make a move. Eventually she had taken to setting destinations herself but once we'd landed I never even opened the door.

I dressed quietly in the dark of my room.

When I entered the console room the humming grew louder, she was practically singing to me.

"Yes, dear, I'm sorry. I've been away for awhile. I'm...not exactly...better but for the first time in a long while I feel as though I could be, someday soon. Thank you for your patience." I said stroking the console.

There was no one but her to hear my voice breaking. No one but her to see the tears come.

There was no one but her.

I closed my eyes and allowed my hand to grasp the lever.

"What say, old girl, let's be brave, let's go pick up some strays."

I swallowed and pulled.

"Let's go on an adventure."


End file.
